Richard Swift - 'The Novelist' (Polydor/ Secretly Canadian) Released 18/09/06

Escewing the modern dictates of digital gloss and production, Minnesota's son Richard Swift chooses to use analogue dedication to his vision of pop as a living thing, incarnate, true and with a degree of nostalgia for the sound of an old 45 - 'The Novelist' was recorded on a four-track cassette outside of the studio environment. Producer Elijah Thomson wrote that 'The Novelist' is an "audiophile archivist experiment...for a kaleidoscopic trip aboard an intergalactic vaudevillian steamship with a speakeasy code-word". With a Van Dyke Parks style production and Badly Drawn Boy gait, the references come thick and fast.

'Foreward' opens with pastoral charms with a fairytale back-light then undergoes a ragtime twist, then to 'Lady Day' with Richard's lazy drawl propped up by the piano - a melancholy glassy-eyed-propping-up-the-bar-tune. Ragtime jazz lights up 'Lovely Night' with brushed drums, noodling clarinet and a warm vaudeville feel - "...tonight, it's going to be a lovely night/ with everybody looking oh so right/ and I wish that I was never born...". 'Sadsong St.' possesses a junkyard feel with zither, organ, and the muted Richard delivering his ode 'to the buskers end of the line' - "...nobody can hear you when you live on sadsong street...". "I am New York/ tired and weak/ I try to write a book each time I speak..." sings R.S. on the title track 'The Novelist' with a drawl, accordion weeping and piano twirls, a song about something to say but doesn't really say anything. 'Looking Back I Should Have Been Home More' proves the standout track with a bar-room piano and bitter-sweet love-song - "...maybe I'll be home tonight/ I love ya/ but honey now I've got to be gone...", a voice most open and reaching for Elvis Costello's heights.

There's mussels to unshell for those who dig The Beatles 'White Album' for its vignettes, Badly Drawn Boy for piano songs, and Rufus Wainwright for style and delivery. It's a short story at 19.40 minutes that provides a taster of an artist with much to deliver. More a yarn than a novel but with a great warmth and bonhomie that'll shoulder the down at heel.